Cupcakes: A Buttercream's Best Friend

Last week I showed you how to make the perfect buttercream.  This week, I thought I’d show you a fabulous conveyance for said frosting.  Even as good as the buttercream is, you still can’t just eat it with a spoon.  Not if there are other people present, anyway.  These cupcakes are soft and tender and I’d say they fall into the category of a sponge cake. 

Here’s what you’ll need:

• 1 cup flour
• ¾ cup sugar
• ½ teaspoon baking powder
• ½ teaspoon baking soda
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 3 eggs
• ¼ cup oil
• ¼ cup buttermilk
• 2 Tablespoons water
• 1 teaspoon vanilla

Start by preheating your oven to 350° and lining/spraying your muffin pan.  Next up, measure all of your dry ingredients into a large-ish mixing bowl. 

Whisk those together and set it aside.  Next, you need to separate the eggs.  (Seeley has the perfect tip for that here.)  If you measure all the rest of your wet ingredients first, you can just drop the yolks in with them and save dirtying an extra dish.  

Beat the egg whites until you get stiff peaks.  <giggle>  Sorry, I just can’t help myself.  But if you don’t laugh at the term ‘stiff peaks’, then you’ve never read a really bad romance novel.  Some of the descriptive phrases that people come up with are simply amazing.  I have yet to actually come across stiff peaks (HA!), but I guarantee it’s out there somewhere.  Oops, I got sidetracked.  Where was I?  Oh yes, egg whites. 

Set those aside and whisk together the other wet ingredients and pour them over the dry stuff. 

Stir until it just comes together. 

Add about ⅓ of the egg whites. 

Fold that in until it’s mostly incorporated before adding the next third. 

Stirring will deflate the egg whites, so make sure you’re gently folding them in.  Cut through the middle with your spatula.

Then scrape along the bottom of the bowl and up over the top. 

Continue that with the remaining egg whites until they’re all incorporated.  Spoon the batter into the muffin cups, filling each one about ⅔ full.  I always put my muffin tins on a sheet pan.  It makes them easier to move around, and it’s also insurance in case I’ve filled them too full.   

Now, just before you put the cupcakes into the oven turn the temperature up to 425°.  Bake them at that temperature for 5 minutes, then turn it back down to 350°.  Bake them for an additional 10 – 12 minutes. (That’s a total of 15 – 17 minutes.)  They’ll be just starting to brown around the edges and a toothpick inserted in the middle of one should come out clean.  Allow them to cool in the pan for only 2 or 3 minutes before relocating them to a cooling rack. 

When they’ve cooled completely, top each one with a generous amount of delicious buttercream. 

The interior of these cupcakes is fabulous.  They’re light, fluffy, and moist without feeling oily. 

What perfectly innocent phrase makes you crack up?  Come on, we all have our sophomoric moments. 

Snickerdoodles!

No, that's not me finding creative ways to swear without swearing. (why the fuck would I do that?)

It's cookies!

In addition to these being one of Recipe Guy's favourite cookies (which means I will be making them again in a few months), I had a request for these at work. Yup, I'm back to work full time, which means the cookie request board is back in business.

Snickerdoodles are a variation on a sugar cookie. They have a slightly softer dough than typical sugar cookies, and because of that they aren't rolled flat and cut. They're rolled into balls and allowed to flatten all on their own. They're also covered in cinnamon sugar. Anything covered in cinnamon sugar is awesome. Even toast.

The one distinct difference between snickerdoodles and other sugar cookies is the leavener. Snickerdoodles use cream of tartar in place of the baking powder.

Cream of tartar is actually a component of baking powder, but the use of it straight to react with the baking soda results in a cookie that puffs up beautifully in the oven, breaking the sugared top and creating that lovely crackled look.

They fall a bit as the air trapped inside them cools and decreases in volume, minimizing the cracked look, but they'll stay nice and soft inside. Soft chewy middle, crispy crackled outside, and covered in cinnamon sugar like some kind of perfect cookie version of a breakfast doughnut...

Snickerdoodles

• 1 c butter
• 1 1/2 c sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 tsp vanilla
• 2-1/2 to 3 c flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 2 tsp cream of tartar
• cinnamon sugar

Make sure the butter and eggs are at room temperature. If they're not, use one of Taneasha's awesome tips to fix that.

Cream the butter and sugar until they're fluffy and golden.

Beat in the eggs and vanilla until you have something resembling a soft buttercream icing.

Dump in 2-1/2 cups of flour, and then top with the baking soda and cream of tartar. Give the dry stuff a gentle stir before mixing it into the wet stuff. Once you've got the flour mixed in, decide if you need any of that remaining cup.

The dough should be soft and a little bit sticky.

You should be able to form it into a ball with only minimal amounts sticking to your fingers.

Wrap the almost sticky dough in plastic and let it chill in the fridge for at least 10 minutes. You can leave it in there for a day if you're planning ahead, but if you do, give it at least 30 minutes on the counter. If it's too cold, you'll need to put a lot of work into rolling the dough into balls, and since cookies are technically a pastry, you want to touch them as little as possible.

Cold balls plus too much handling equals tough cookies.

Preheat the oven now! 350.

Bust off a piece of dough about the size of a cherry.

Gently roll it into a ball, and then drop that ball into a small dish of cinnamon sugar.

Jiggle the dish and roll the ball around until it's completely covered.

Once you've done that a dozen times, and have a dozen sugary balls on a parchment covered sheet, bake them for 8 to 10 minutes.

(It took a lot of restraint to not eat these things! Holy crap I need to make some kind of no bake doughnut hole cookie!)

Mine needed only 8.

These things are freaking amazing. I've already packed them up to take to work because if I didn't I'd probably eat a dozen between now and then. Mostly now.

What's your favourite cookie?